When the idea
reached Harlem, it resulted in the establishment of the Greater New
York Coordinating Committee. One of its founders and organizers
was the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell,Jr., and the Committee received
considerable support from his church, the Abyssinian Baptist Church.
It was Powell's claim that the Committee was shunned by most
"respectable" Negroes but that its supporters included an unusually
wide variety of radicals. The group referred to its members as
antebellum Negroes by which, Powell said, they meant before
Civil War II. Some of them, he claimed, favored repatriation to
Africa; others were for black capitalism; still another group,
including Powell himself, wanted the Negro to achieve full dignity
within the American system. In spite of the variety of their
objectives, all of them believed that the Afro-American must first
achieve economic security before any of these specific goals
could be attained.
It was on this primary tactical necessity that they were able to
coordinate their activities. They picketed white-owned stores on
125th Street. They carried signs advocating, "Don't buy where you
can't work," and Powell maintained that they were able almost to
stop trade totally at any target they chose to picket.
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